David Millman
Associate Dean for Technology and Chief Information Officer
New York University
This briefing provides an update on a project focused on the preservation of complex, non-traditional forms of publication, such as those with embedded audio or video, data visualizations, non-linear modes of navigation, and more. The Embedding Preservability for New Forms of Scholarship project builds off of an earlier project called Enhancing Services to Preserve New Forms of Scholarship. Both projects were funded by the Mellon Foundation and led by New York University (NYU) Libraries. The initial project reviewed book-length publications already published to determine whether they could be preserved using a scalable workflow. This resulted in a set of 68 recommendations designed to guide publishers to create digital publications that are more likely to be preserved. The current, second project embeds a small team of preservation experts into publisher workflows and works with publishers and platform developers to test and refine the original recommendations. The embedded team includes representatives from NYU Libraries, LOCKSS, Portico, and the University of Michigan Libraries. The presenter will briefly introduce the two projects and the resulting recommendations from the earlier project; describe their approach to embedding preservationists with publishers (Amherst College Press, British Archaeological Reports, Gallaudet University Press, American Psychological Association, University of British Columbia Press, University of Michigan Press, Arte Público Press, and University of Minnesota Press) and platforms (Manifold, Fulcrum, PubPub, and RavenSpace) as they support the creation of complex publications; and summarize some of the initial observations emerging from this process—specifically the challenges to date and what the evidence indicates could be useful in terms of tools and the next iteration of recommendations.
See also: https://www.cni.org/topics/digital-preservation/preserving-new-forms-of-scholarship